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Engineering
Aerospace Engineering
Orbital debris removal concept -- Please poke holes in it...
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[QUOTE="Baluncore, post: 6863676, member: 447632"] One will have issues at any speed. You need to explain what you mean by issues, and how you will select particles, and of what speed, for removal. LEO satellites orbit at velocities of about 7 km/s. Everything else at that height orbits at a similar speed, or it would not be part of the orbiting debris problem. It seems counter-intuitive, but as a lower orbit is encountered, the speed is increased, and the particle is in a thicker atmosphere, which accelerates both the orbital velocity and the rate of descent. Since the orbital velocity is faster than the speed of sound in Mylar, only local damage will be done when the sheet is perforated. In order to decelerate a particle, there must be a loss of momentum. That requires the sheet material both have mass, and be travelling slower than the particle. But the thin Mylar sheet would have a low mass/area, so would make little difference to the momentum of a particle. An orbiting Mylar sheet would encounter particles head-on at 14 km/sec, at a much greater rate, than particles orbiting in a similar direction. If the sheet was not in orbit, how could you keep it up there long enough to be of some use. To avoid picking up too much thin atmosphere, the Mylar sheet would need to orbit edge-on. It would be perforated by particles in orthogonal orbits, having differential velocities of typically 10 km/sec. Many of those would be accelerated by the encounter. [/QUOTE]
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Orbital debris removal concept -- Please poke holes in it...
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